When Abortion in Sheep Can be Prevented

This is Duffy’s story:

Duffy was born to Rosy in 2010, our only triplet birth on the farm so far (you can read about it here). She was due to lamb for the 1st time in early March, 2012. About ten days before she was due she went into labor – on February 25th – and I was the only one home because I was sick. I went to feed hay in the late afternoon/early evening and found Duffy in the back of the pasture by herself.

I got her into the barn but her labor did not progress so I tried to assist. She was hardly dilated and I couldn’t get to the lambs. Plus there was an odor… a bad odor. I called our vet, Dale (who is now retired and missed dearly), and he and his wife got to our place about 45 minutes later. He pulled twin lambs with a lot of difficulty and gave Duffy antibiotics and other medications. He estimated that the lambs had died a day or so prior to her aborting them.

He told me to call him if any other ewes aborted because if the cause of Duffy’s abortion was infectious, it could go through the flock. Over the next days and weeks I watched the other pregnant ewes closely and researched causes for abortion in sheep. I learned that a large percentage of sheep abortion is caused by non-infections diseases – read: injury, rough handling, poisonous plants and inadequate feeding.

During this time I began to consider that Duffy had been injured prior to aborting her lambs and tried to remember any incidence of injury.

Two days before Duffy aborted her lambs we vaccinated the pregnant ewes. I remembered that Duffy had gotten pushed by another sheep into the stall doorway on her way out of the barn when we led the sheep back to their pasture. The doorways had O-rings on them from when the barn housed horses and I believe that is what caused her abortion. I immediately took the O-rings off the doorways of any stall that the sheep would enter.

Our other 5 ewes lambed normally in March and produced a total of 9 lambs (4 sets of twins and a singleton).

Please look all around your sheep handling areas to be sure there are no potential hazards. We used this stall without any trouble for 6 years, BUT it only takes 1 second for a freak accident to happen. This time it cost us 2 lambs.